wowwikifandomcom-20200223-history
Shade of Aran
The Shade of Aran is a boss in the abandoned tower of Karazhan. He is the spirit of Nielas Aran, the father of Medivh, killed in a battle to contain the future Guardian when the power inside him awakened. How his spirit became trapped inside his son's tower is unknown. He is a powerful mage, he uses Frostbolt, Fireball, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Explosion, Blizzard, Flame Wreath and Summon Water Elemental. Basic Info Aran is located in the Guardian's Library in Karazhan. He has ~650k HP and very low Armor - melee DPS is brutally effective against him. He must be fought in a very small arena which is a circle maybe 35 yds in radius. He is completely untankable - he almost never melees, doesn't have a standard aggro list, and if he gets away from the center of his arena, he'll run right back. In patch 2.0.7 the change was made that Berthold the Doorman would be able to teleport players to the Shade of Aran's room. This option only becomes available when players have defeated the Shade of Aran. Attacks and Abilities All of Aran's basic spells have infinite range and are semi-randomly targeted. (he is intelligent and will keep nuking a target that's low on HP) They can all be affected by counterspell/pummel/earth shock etc. It should be noted that earth shock is a poor substitute for other forms of interrupts and spell locks for this fight due to earth shock only being able to lock down the school for 2 seconds. If you have an enhancement shaman in the raid, great get him to lock down a school, any other type of shaman is better off healing/dpsing depending on spec. If someone accidentally pulls Aran and you just zoned in at the start of the instance, he can still nuke you. * Aran has a weak melee attack that he will only use if all 3 spell trees (Fire/Frost/Arcane) are locked out by Counterspell-type abilities. Basic Attacks * Frostbolt 3 sec cast, 4400ish damage. * Fireball 3 sec cast, 4400ish damage. * Arcane Missiles 5 sec channeled, 1500 damage per missile. * Chains of Ice - 10 second Root, does not break on damage. Dispellable. * Conflagration - Deals 8000 fire damage over 10 sec to the affected player, and a smaller amount of damage to nearby players. Conflagged players are disoriented and cannot use any spells or abilities. * Slow: Reduces movement and melee attack speed by a considerable amount for 10 seconds. Dispellable. Druids can shapeshift to remove the reduce movement effect. Special Abilities * Nielas Aran's special abilities cannot be locked out by Counterspells. For example, if you CS a Fireball, he can't fireball for 10 seconds, but he could Flame Wreath at any time. * Counterspell - 10yd radius AoE around Aran, occurs very often. Any caster in range is quickly rendered useless. * Blizzard 1700/second, large AoE that moves slowly clockwise 360 degrees around the edge of his arena. Kinda like a less damaging C'thun dark glare. The blizzard has a large area of effect, and it covers one side of the room. You will be hit by the Blizzard if you are meleeing him and on the side it's traveling on. * Magnetic Pull / Super Arcane Explosion - Pulls everyone to the center of the room, Slows everyone, then starts a 10(?) second uninterruptable cast that deals 12,000 damage to a 30 yard radius (note that the room is only 35yds wide). If you start running as soon as you're pulled, you can avoid the AE even while Slowed. Rogues using Cloak of Shadows can get rid of the slow and maybe even avoid the Super Arcane Explosion, that should really only be used as a last resort in case of lag or something were you cannot get out of the way in time. * Flame Wreath - 5 sec uninterruptable cast. Targets 3 random people in the raid. If there is no one close to them, nothing happens. If there are any other players near the target, it creates a circle of fire on the ground for 15 seconds. Anyone who crosses the flame wreath (moving in or out) will trigger a 3-4k Explosion that hits everyone in the room. Do not use ANY abilities which makes yourself immune to magic effects (such as Divine Shield, Ice Block, Cloak of Shadows) while in a Flame Wreath, as this will cause an explosion. Pets will set off flame wreath if they cross the wreath. *: As lf 2/26/07 pets no longer trigger this effect. Water Elementals At 40% HP, Nielas Aran summons 4 elite Water Elementals. They have tons of HP(maybe even more than Aran himself) but will despawn after 90 seconds. They shoot a constant stream of frostbolts for 2000ish damage. They can be banished and feared, and Fear is the main method of controlling them. Enrage When Nielas Aran gets about 33,000 mana, he will do an emote ("Give an old man some time for a refreshing drink"), polymorph the entire raid (causing you to regain most if not all of your hp) and start drinking. After he drinks for 10 seconds he will start casting an AoE Pyroblast. The Pyroblast does 7000-7500 damage. Two druids using tranquility and independant heals can heal back the whole raid. **Note** A druid using tree form or a shaman using one of their totems (Ie Fire elemental or earth elemental) can disrupt the whole entire enrage. His Enrage Drink will restore mana quickly. Fire Elemental totem is better then the earth totem because of the fast attack speed. The totem hopefully interrupts him when he first starts drinking which will leave him no mana for pyroblast. This strat should be used as a supplement to regular strat and should not be counted as a 100% success due to the random factor of the elementals attack matching the second he sits to drink. Strategies * Raid DPS must stay high in order to prevent Aran from running out of mana and Enraging. Full out DSP is the best strat if you have the DPS. You will be able to bridge the gab on dps by makeing sure all healers have a dot on the boss and max dot him. DPS hybrids should be on max DPS if they are not a primary healer. The idea is to kill him before he enrages. DPS is the key. * Under the circumstances that Frostbolt, Fireball, and Arcane Missiles are on cooldown due to kicks, counterspells, and etc, he WILL melee very fast for 2400 crushing on leather. * Healing on Aran's target must be extremely fast, 5k nukes can kill people very quickly. * Counterspells (pummel kick etc) should try as much as possible to interrupt Fire and Frost spells right before they finish casting. If you interrupt a spell right as it starts, he'll just start casting another. Waiting to interrupt causes him to waste more time without doing damage, and also prevents him from running out of mana and Enraging. Earth Shock on 6 sec cooldown and 2 second tree lock is not enough. He will resume casting in that tree very shorly and before the cooldown on earthshock is up. Its best to have the shaman focus on dps/healing and assist with shocks when they can. * Conflag is Aran's most damaging "regular nuke" and can rapidly kill someone. Make SURE to heal the conflagged guy! * Dealing with Arcane Explosion is easy - even if you are Slowed the whole time, 10sec is more than enough time to get away from AE. In order to maximize raid DPS, meleers can stay in and melee for 5-6 seconds while he casts AE. As long as someone dispels Slow off them, it only takes 3 seconds to run out. * Blizzards are a horrible threat to ranged DPS, standing still in a blizzard you'll take probably 13k damage before it moves off you. The easiest way to deal with Blizzard is to move to the center, the only place that doesn't get blizz'd. Unfortunately, this means you're exposed to Counterspell for at least 10 seconds, and you're clumped up for Flame Wreaths. * Flame Wreath can wipe a raid in a matter of seconds. The best way to handle Flame Wreath is to prevent it altogether. Stay spread out any time you're not dodging Blizzards, so even if he does cast it there's a chance it won't stick. When it does occur, just stay away from flame wreath. * At 40%, you've got 90 seconds to DPS the heck out of Aran while keeping people alive against 4 extremely strong Water Elementals. Fear is the recommended method of CC for water elementals, but Counterspell works well too - locking out Frost for 10 seconds means that they can't use their main attack. (Frostbolt) * Your raid can easily survive Aran's "enrage", just make sure everyone has over 7500hp. On most succesful kills, the polymorph > pyroblast cannot be avoided. *If you lack the raw dps, then dps him until 42-45%, wait for him to go oom and polymorph the raid. Once everyone is back to full health continue strong dps on him to 40%, and then CC the adds for 90 seconds while maintaining interrupts and dps on Aran. The reason for this is if you have elementals out and he polymorph's the raid it is usually a wipe. This way you can control the adds and not have to worry about keeping his health below his mana for the fight. * Now that the normal game interface allows you to see "enemy castbar" is it vital to use against this boss to have a few seconds of warning as to what he will use. * It is possible (and recommended especially for priests and other rather low-hp classes) to have an imp stand in the middle of the room set to "stay", thus not triggering flame wreath but giving the blood pact aura for the whole room. Loot Movies *http://www.lrguild.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3138 Quotes *"I will not be tortured again!" *"Yes, yes, my son is quite powerful... but I have powers of my own!" *"I'll show you: This beaten dog still has some teeth!" *"Torment me no more!" *"Surely you would not deny an old man a replenishing drink? No, no I thought not." *"I am not some simple jester! I am Nielas Aran!" *"No, please. My son... he's gone mad!" *"Who are you? Get away from me!" *"Back to the cold dark with you!" *"I'll freeze you all!" *"Burn you hellish fiends!" *Upon killing a player: "I want this nightmare to be over!" *Upon dying: "Finally... The nightmare is.. over..." External Links *Loot Table : gsDKP.Com (12 Items - Complete) *Thottbot *AmpWoW Strategy Diagram * http://nordrassor.freehostia.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=636 *Shade of Aran Strategy GuideBosskillers.com Category:Ghosts Category:Humans Category:Bosses Category:Instance:Karazhan